Publication Date:
2022-07-05
Description:
As the sea-ice modeling community is shifting to advanced numerical frameworks, developing
new sea-ice rheologies, and increasing model spatial resolution, ubiquitous deformation features in the Arctic
sea ice are now being resolved by sea-ice models. Initiated at the Forum for Arctic Modeling and Observational
Synthesis, the Sea Ice Rheology Experiment (SIREx) aims at evaluating state-of-the-art sea-ice models
using existing and new metrics to understand how the simulated deformation fields are affected by different
representations of sea-ice physics (rheology) and by model configuration. Part 1 of the SIREx analysis is
concerned with evaluation of the statistical distribution and scaling properties of sea-ice deformation fields
from 35 different simulations against those from the RADARSAT Geophysical Processor System (RGPS).
For the first time, the viscous-plastic (and the elastic-viscous-plastic variant), elastic-anisotropic-plastic, and
Maxwell-elasto-brittle rheologies are compared in a single study. We find that both plastic and brittle sea-ice
rheologies have the potential to reproduce the observed RGPS deformation statistics, including multi-fractality.
Model configuration (e.g., numerical convergence, atmospheric representation, spatial resolution) and physical
parameterizations (e.g., ice strength parameters and ice thickness distribution) both have effects as important as
the choice of sea-ice rheology on the deformation statistics. It is therefore not straightforward to attribute model
performance to a specific rheological framework using current deformation metrics. In light of these results, we
further evaluate the statistical properties of simulated Linear Kinematic Features in a SIREx Part 2 companion
paper.
Repository Name:
EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
Type:
Article
,
NonPeerReviewed
Format:
application/pdf
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